What if We Decided to Take Care of Everyone Who Needed Treatment? Workforce Planning in Mozambique Using Simulation of Demand for HIV/AIDS Care

One of the most significant challenges in fighting the AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa is securing the health care workforce to deliver care in settings where the manpower is already in short supply. The authors produced a demand-driven staffing model based on treatment protocols for HIV-positive patients that adhere to Mozambican guidelines. The model can be adjusted for the volumes of patients at differing stages of their disease, varying provider productivity, proportion who are pregnant, attrition rates, and other variables. The planning tool proposed could lead to more realistic and appropriate estimates of workforce levels required to provide high-quality HIV care in a low-resource settings. [adapted from author]